Evaluation of the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1998-2001 (ICPSR 20362)

Citation

Easterling, Doug, Harvey, Lynn, Mac-Thompson, Donald, and Allen, Marcus. Evaluation of the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1998-2001. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2008-02-28. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20362.v1

Summary

The purpose of this study was to perform an initial
evaluation of key aspects of the Winston-Salem Strategic Approaches to
Community Safety Initiative (SACSI). The research team administered a
SACSI Process Questionnaire to the SACSI Core Team and Working Group
during the fall of 2000. Part 1, SACSI Core Team/Working Group
Questionnaire Data, provides survey responses from 28 members of the
Working Group and/or Core Team who completed the questionnaires.
Variables in Part 1 were divided into four sections: (1) perceived
functioning of the Core Team/Working Group, (2) personal experience of
the group/team member, (3) perceived effectiveness or ineffectiveness
of various elements of the SACSI program, and (4) reactions to
suggestions for increasing the scope of the SACSI program. The
research team also conducted an analysis of reoffending among SACSI
Offenders in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in order to assess whether
criminal behavior changed following the implementation of the
Notification Program that was conducted with offenders on probation to
communicate to them the low tolerance for violent crime in the
community. To determine if criminal behavior changed following the
program, the research team obtained arrest records from the
Winston-Salem Police Department of 138 subjects who attended a
notification session between September 9, 1999, and September 7, 2000.
These records are contained in Part 2, Notification Program Offender
Data. Variables in Part 2 included notification (status and date),
age group, prior record, and 36 variables pertaining to being arrested
for or identified as a suspect in nine specific types of crime.

Citation

Easterling, Doug, Harvey, Lynn, Mac-Thompson, Donald, and Allen, Marcus. Evaluation of the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1998-2001. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2008-02-28. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20362.v1

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

none

Restrictions

A downloadable version of data for this study is available however, certain identifying information in the downloadable version may have been masked or edited to protect respondent privacy. Additional data not included in the downloadable version are available in a restricted version of this data collection. For more information about the differences between the downloadable data and the restricted data for this study, please refer to the codebook notes section of the PDF codebook. Users interested in obtaining restricted data must complete and sign a Restricted Data Use Agreement, describe the research project and data protection plan, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Time Period(s)

1998 -- 2001

Date of Collection

2000-09 -- 2001-03

Data Collection Notes

(1) Data from the following evaluation methods are not
available as part of this collection: Interviews with the Core Team,
Interviews with the project director, Observation of notification
sessions, Observation of Operation Reach sessions, Interviews with
SACSI partners involved in notification, Interviews with SACSI
partners involved in Operation Reach, Interviews with offenders who
participated in SACSI, Focus group with parents, and Analysis of
violence trends in Winston-Salem. (2) Some information such as the
dates in which offenders were notified and the total sample size
differed between the final report and the data. Users should be aware
that when study information differed between the final report and the
data, ICPSR referenced the data, and not figures contained in the
final report, to compose description and citation information. (3)
Users are encouraged to refer to the final report cited in the
"Related Literature" section of this study for more detailed
information regarding the study design, methodology, and sampling.

Study Purpose

The purpose of this study was to perform an
initial evaluation of key aspects of the Winston-Salem Strategic
Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI). The evaluation
design was intended to assess how the Winston-Salem initiative
operated with regard to both the overall SACSI process and the
Notification Program. The primary objective of the SACSI Process
Questionnaire was to perform an evaluation of the overall SACSI
process. The goal of the program-level evaluation of notification was
to determine if the initiative was effective in communicating the
message that "violence will not be tolerated in Winston-Salem" and
providing youthful offenders with opportunities and support for a more
positive life course.

Study Design

The research team administered a Strategic
Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) Process
Questionnaire to the SACSI Core Team and Working Group during the fall
of 2000. The SACSI Process Questionnaire covered a broad range of
issues related to the way in which the SACSI process was unfolding
from the perspective of the Core Team and the Working Group. All
members of the Core Team and the Working Group were provided with
questionnaires to complete at the beginning of one of their respective
meetings. Part 1 provides survey responses from 28 members of the
Working Group and/or Core Team who completed the questionnaires. The
questionnaires were essentially equivalent except that Core Team
members were asked to rate a number of issues with regard to the Core
Team, while Working Group members were asked to rate those same issues
with regard to the Working Group. Individuals who were members of both
the Working Group and the Core Team completed the survey only
once.

The research team also conducted an analysis of reoffending among
SACSI Offenders in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in order to assess
whether criminal behavior changed following the implementation of the
Notification Program. The Notification Program entailed delivering a
"stop-the-violence" message to juvenile offenders, as well as adult
offenders who were known to be involving juveniles in their crimes.
Typically, those being notified were on probation. Under this program
the Winston-Salem Police Department "called in" a group of individuals
from the target population and, over the course of a one- to two-hour
session, repeatedly "notified" the participants that the community
would not tolerate any more instances of violent behavior on their
part. The message for older offenders was, "No guns, no violence, and
do not involve kids in criminal activity." For juveniles the message
of "No guns, no violence," was the same.

To determine if criminal behavior changed following the
Notification Program, the research team obtained arrest records from
the Winston-Salem Police Department of 138 subjects who had attended a
notification session between September 9, 1999 and September 7, 2000
(Part 2). These records listed all arrests for SACSI-defined crimes
(i.e., homicide, aggravated assault, kidnapping, rape, robbery, and
weapons violation), as well as arrests for "simple assault" between
January 1998 and January 2001. The final report stated that any given
individual in the sample was followed for at least one year subsequent
to notification. However, given the revised versions of Table 10,
Table 12, and Table 13 that the principal investigators provided, not
all notified offenders were followed for at least one year. Rather,
all notified offenders were followed up through January 31, 2001,
regardless of their notification date.

Sample

For Part 1, the sample consisted of a total of 28
members of the Working Group and/or Core Team. The 14-member Core Team
is a group of institutional leaders (e.g., United States attorney,
superintendent of schools, police chief, director of CenterPoint Human
Services, and the director of the district office of the Department of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention) who established the
strategic focus and programmatic direction for SACSI during the
planning phase of the initiative. The Working Group consisted of about
25 individuals who were "on the ground" carrying out the programs and
activities of SACSI. These individuals represented the same agencies
involved in the Core Team, plus a number of community-based
organizations that became invested in SACSI over the course of the
first two years of operation (e.g., Parks and Recreation, the Urban
League, and VisionsWork Youth Services).

For Part 2, the sample consisted of all those Track 1A, Track 1B,
or Track 2 offenders who had been notified between September 1999 and
September 2000 and who had criminal records within the Winston-Salem
Police Department (WSPD) database. A total of 138 offenders, including
72 juveniles and 66 adults, met these criteria. Track 1A offenders
were juveniles who had committed two or more SACSI-defined crimes
(i.e., aggravated assault, homicide, rape, kidnapping, robbery, sexual
offenses, or weapons violations). Track 1B offenders were adults with
a history of involving juveniles in violent crime, and Track 2
offenders were juveniles who had been arrested once for a
SACSI-defined crime.

Universe

Part 1: All members of the Winston-Salem Strategic
Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) Core Team and/or
Working Group in the fall of 2000. Part 2: All juveniles with a
history of violent offending, juveniles who had exhibited behavior
that suggested they were on the path to violent crime, and adult
offenders who had involved juveniles in their crime in Winston-Salem,
North Carolina from 1998 to 2001.

Unit(s) of Observation

individual

Data Source

For Part 1, data were obtained from written
surveys. For Part 2, the research team obtained arrest records from
the Winston-Salem Police Department.

Data Type(s)

aggregate data, and survey data

Mode of Data Collection

on-site questionnaire

record abstracts

Description of Variables

Variables in Part 1 were divided into four
sections:

Perceived functioning of the Core Team/Working Group: clarity of
the goals, objectives and mission of SACSI to group/team members, and
group/team members' understanding and ownership of roles and
responsibilities.

Personal experience of the group/team member: clarity of goals
and objectives to the individual, individual sense of ownership of the
SACSI program, perceptions of availability of resources to carry out
the SACSI program, and personal satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the
SACSI program.

Perceived effectiveness or ineffectiveness of various elements
of the SACSI program (e.g., Notification Program, Operation Reach,
Streetworker Program, and the Violent Incident Review Team).

Reactions to suggestions for increasing the scope of the SACSI
program.

Variables in Part 2 included notification (status and date), age
group, prior record, and 36 variables pertaining to being arrested for
or identified as a suspect in nine specific types of crime. Included
in Part 2 were arrest variables for nine crimes (murder, rape,
robbery, aggravated assault, weapons violations, sex offenses,
kidnapping, simple assault, and SACSI-defined "violent" offenses) for
the time period both prior to the notification date and following the
notification date. An additional 18 variables identified whether the
subject was either arrested or listed as a suspect for the same nine
crimes, again both before and after the notification date.

Response Rates

Part 1: Not available. Part 2: Not applicable.

Presence of Common Scales

Original Release Date

2008-02-28

Version Date

2008-02-28

Version History

2008-02-28 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

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